D and J Nicol v Dundee Harbour Trustees: HL 10 Dec 1914

Whether a corporation created by a statute has a particular power depends exclusively on whether that power has been expressly given to it by the statute regulating it, or can be implied from the language used.
Lord Dunedin declared: ‘By the law of Scotland a litigant, and in particular a pursuer, must always qualify title and interest. Though the phrase ‘title to sue’ has been a heading under which cases have been collected from at least the time of Morison’s Dictionary and Brown’s Synopsis, I am not aware that anyone of authority has risked a definition of what constitutes title to sue. I am not disposed to do so, but I think that it may fairly be said that for a person to have such title he must be a party (using the word in its widest sense) to some legal relation which gives him some right which the person against whom he raises the action either infringes or denies.’

Judges:

Lord Dunedin

Citations:

1915 SC (HL) 7, [1915] AC 550, (1914) 2 SLT 418, [1914] UKHL 4

Links:

Bailii

Jurisdiction:

Scotland

Cited by:

CitedAXA General Insurance Ltd and Others v Lord Advocate and Others SC 12-Oct-2011
Standing to Claim under A1P1 ECHR
The appellants had written employers’ liability insurance policies. They appealed against rejection of their challenge to the 2009 Act which provided that asymptomatic pleural plaques, pleural thickening and asbestosis should constitute actionable . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Company

Updated: 25 September 2022; Ref: scu.447658